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THE BUSHEL. 




WOIVIArSIHOOO SUFFRAOE. 


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THE LIGHT 


UNDER THE bushel: 

Womanhood Suffrage. 


Copyright, 1888, by the Author, Charles Howard Fitch. 

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The Criticism of Readers is personally invited, whether it 
be favorable or adverse. 


DENVER, OODO. 

COLEMAN & HAIGH PRINT. 
1888. 







“ Ye are the light of the world. 

Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, 
but on a candle-stick, and it giveth light unto all that are 
in the house. Let your light so shine.” 










Chapter I.—ITS OPPOSITION. 

1. —When in figrhtiug the battles of God and human¬ 
ity we go against the opposition to womanhood-suffrage, 
we find no logically-marshalled hosts, but our ears are as¬ 
saulted by peevish and cynical voices, some of which pre¬ 
tend to be oracles of good repute, and issue from the 
shadows of supposedly respect.able places. 

2. —The superstition of the human mind is prone to 
attribute divine mystery to “ Moodus ” noises, to the creak- 
ings of tree limbs, and to the cries of small animals nes¬ 
tled even under the eaves of temples. We carry a lan¬ 
tern into these shadowy places, and find them the abodes 
of squeaking mice, rather than of whispering gods. 

3. —On the subject of woman-hood suffrage it is diffi¬ 
cult to make any controversy with men, for the chief op¬ 
position immediately drops on all fours; that is, it is lees 
than manly, and indeed appears more in keeping with that 
creature scripturally affirmed to be at variance with the 
seed of the woman. 

4. —The opposition seems to be a fraternity of ignor¬ 
ance, churlishness, and tyranny attempting to sneer down 
reason, gentleness, and fair play. It is a retroactive con¬ 
demnation of its source, and springs from a condition of 
the human mind so much debased that it should in justice 
cry aloud for nothing but its own extinction. 


THE LIGHT UNDER THE BUSHEL: 


5. —Persons spiritually dwarfed, socially corset-laced 
and politically benighted; persons tied to the surplice 
strings of preposterous superstitions, persons whose best 
inspiration is a low sense of individual boss-ism, persons 
whose minds are in a gloom of prejudice which no new 
idea can be expected to light up, men of brutal sensuality 
and women of insectivorous frivolity—from such a com¬ 
pany we would expect the idea of woman-hood suffrage to 
be greeted with a sneer, and it is so greeted. 

6. —Such a greeting from any source would be evi¬ 
dence of wrong. Righteousness ceases with a sneer. 

7. —Two claims which appear to merit hearing are 
made in favor of the present subordinated status of wom¬ 
anhood—that of false science which asserts it to be nat¬ 
ural, and that of false courtesy which would take away a 
right for the wheedling pleasure of offering it as as a gift. 

8. —The bounden privilege and duty ot independent 
choice is expressed in suffrage. The due value credited to 
this choice is enfranchisement. That a woman possessed 
in the fullest degree of conscience, judgment, and person¬ 
al interest in the affairs of government should have that 
conscience stilled, that judgment buried alive, and that 
interest given over to care-takers irresponsible to herself 
is wholly unnatural. 

9. —Nearly every State in the Union has an asylum for 
the dumb, to foster their instincts into an artificial habit of 
speech, but here is a vast multitude of sentient beings 
w'hich every State endeavors to hold in unreasonable si¬ 
lence. 

10. —Td call such suppression natural is an appeal 
from a better to a worse nature. To maintain that mon¬ 
strous and abnormal departures from human nature will 
result from the removal of this bandage over the mouth of 
woman-hood is a position highly fanciful and unfounded, 


WOMANH()OD SUFFRAGE. 


!) 


and one which ought to produce some reason for its unnec¬ 
essary alarm. Otherwise, like the corpse of a dead issue 
this objection might as woll be passed over the gunwale of 
the ship of state to sink into the ocean of oblivion, “un- 
knelled, uncoffiued and unknown.” 

11. —“There will be no danger,” says The Churchman, 
“of a reader of to-day taking seriously the heartless and 
cynical estimate of women which Chesterfield expresses. 
This estimate is obsolete, but curious as a trait of one who 
takes rank as the English Rochefoucauld.” The Church¬ 
man then presents its own estimate; “‘1 want my rights,’ 
says the woman, T do not want politeness or compliments.’ 
We can only say in reply that the male creatui^e cannot af¬ 
ford to do without somebody to be polite and complimen¬ 
tary to.” 

12. —The stupidity vvhich cannot see rights and duties 
coming in without courtesies going out, and which assents 
to the debasement of woman-hood in order to supply man 
with a not-too-intelligent pet is astounding even now. 
The sneering cynicism of this later estimate should be 
held as obsolete, as curious, and as fit a contribution to a 
chamber of horrors as the first. 


Chapter II. ITS JUSTICE. 

1.—When gentleness is trampled upon, the heels of the 
oppressor may drive with burnings of remorse its flame 
into his heart, and though he may lay dead his teachers, 
he will yet bend low at their graves to acknowledge him¬ 
self taught. This method of instruction still prevails, al¬ 
though we desire deliverance from it, at the hands of some 
elder Froebel. By the fire and crucifixion of martyrdom 
the brutishness of human creatures has advanced out of 
its animal savagery, at each step halting in cruelties which 
make the blood of a just man boil with indignation. We 


THE LIGHT UNDER THE BUSHEL: 


(J 


have come to the point where this indignation can no lon¬ 
ger be glossed over with sickly supernatnralism, nor 
soothed by the device of deifying the tokens of a still 
progressive abomination. In place of a syniholimi which 
licenses, we must substitute a just order which prohibits 
these crimes. 

2. —In the furtherance of such a just order, it is nec¬ 
essary that gentleness which has hitherto had the grace of 
occasional sufferance should be elevated to the throne of 
justice, and that woman as the exponent of gentleness 
should be freed of every weight vvhicli mars her title to full 
rank in the human peerage. 

3. —In love and family relations courtesy may be 
abundant. A noble man may not need any law of obliga¬ 
tion—many ignoble men do need it, but surely in the no¬ 
ble man acquiescence is a crown of honor, and none such 
but will applaud when the golden rule of equal and ex¬ 
act justice for all men and women has been erected as a 
monument to endure through future ages. 

4. —Woman-hood needs self-p.otection against the 
brutalizing and infuriating consequences of the liquor 
traffic, and against the barter and sale of womanly virtue 
which makes a practical slave trade in some of our large 
cities, to satisfy desires of “male creatures” such that the 
respectable “Churchman” would scarcely dare to defend 
them. Man-made lava's have never protected vvoman-hood 
against these dishonorable abominations, and it is time 
that woman fhould have a voice in summoning all the 
powers of th:‘ natimi to the protection of her own sex. 

5. —But above all such things, independent right and 
equality are just dues to a woman’s self-respect. We little 
realize all that is lost in true purity and courtesy, and in 
the enlightenment of society by the wretched conven¬ 
tionalisms which narrow the prospects, seal the hearts, 


WOMA NHOOl) S UFFBA GE. 


7 


and petrify the aspirations of women, who must resign 
themselves to the fate of being the annex-souls, imd sub¬ 
sidiary appendages of “male creatures.” 

6. —The position of “The Churchman” that rights in¬ 
volve the loss of courtesies may be experimentally dis- 
disproved. Courtesy is not confined to either sex. Ex¬ 
perience and observation in the government departments 
at Washington, and in business in all sections of the coun- 
tr\’ have taught me that male and female employees, when 
they enjoy recognized rights, have also courtesies, while 
with few and feeble rights they get scant courtesy, and 
are often sufferers from that cavalier treatment affected 
by persons who imagine themselves gentlemen in the 
blood, while yet victims of an atavism which keeps them 
snobs and boors in the behavior. 

7. —But “The Churchman” is despotic. It says: “If 
woman is to have political equality with man she must 
accept equality in all other things. She must give up all 
claim to any consideration as a woman. She can win her 
way to the front only by dint of sheer strength. She must 
bear any burden unpitied which can be laid upon her.” 
These wild remarks are offered without a scintilla of evi¬ 
dence. or logic, and are supremely ridiculous. Even in 
the world of “male creatures” sheer strength cuts a small 
figure, and the weakest man does not' forfeit human pity 
as the price of his vote. These are few less-comfortably- 
pitied beings than the working girls of our large cities. To 
them the politeness of The Churchman’s “male creatures” 
in the false constitution of society is often but the bait of 
a tragic snare, which presently springs its cruel jaws upon 
an outcast victim. But if they had votes, ah then they 
would have a better consideration in both wages and cour¬ 
tesy, without loss of the taste for. gentleness, delicacy and 
beauty which cannot easily be written out of a woman’s 
nature. 


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THE LIGHT UNDER THE BUSHEL: 


8,—“Justice,” wrote William H. Seward, “is on the 
side of Woman Suffrage.” “I.” said Abraham Lincoln, “go 
for all sharing the privileges of government who can as¬ 
sist in bearing its burdens, by no means ex* hiding women.” 


Chapter 111. ITS FITNESS. 

1. —The appeal to nature in sanction of the repression 
of a part of the natural powers of a woman is neatly turn¬ 
ed by Capt. W. De Witt Wallace in these words: “The 
opponents of woman suffrage proclaim that man and 
woman have different natures, and maintain that man can 
represent woman better than woman can represent herself.” 
We grant that woman has, as a political factor, a nature 
peculiar to herself, a nature which, in the course of free 
action and education, would broaden and purify both 
politics and human character. To reduce this nature to a 
cypher is a stricture upon nature, the repression of a good 
and wholesome nature, and a partial paralysis of human 
nature. 

2, —Witness Plato: “In the administration of the 
State, neither a woman as a woman, nor a man as a man 
has any special functions, but the gifts are equally dif- 
used in both cases.”, Whatever be natural to man, and 
whatever natural to woman, the State is of a nature neu¬ 
tral, not sexual, but concerning both sexes, and in which 
both sexes should justly have a voice. 

8.—The exclusion of woman from the affairs of state is 
not of nature but of fashion. It is no more nature than 
the wasp-waist imposed by tight lacing, or the slavery 
imposed by tyranny, or the temporary madness imposed 
by drink. It is not a nature of divine appointment, but 
the girdling of the tree to promote the graft of human 
fashion and folly. 


WOMANHOOD SUFFRAGE. 


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4. —If human natures were nothing more than sexual 
there would be no intellectual nor moral government to 
consider. But, rising out of the sexual in a multiplicity 
of interests, sexual restrictions in matters above sex have 
been left tt) remain as an impediment to the progress of 
mankind. 

5. —This impediment operates to destroy congeniality 
in the higher, and to restrict it to the baser concerns of 
sympathetic life. 

6. —The furtherance of a lofty congeniality is our 
holiest concern. As God made mankind in His own image, 
in the congenial, human to human reflects the likeness of 
that which it most truly is. With this true sieve vice 
shall soonest be sifted to its level, and virtue shall soonest 
find her own, and they that be the children of the Faithful 
shall find Father and Mother, and Sister and Brother— 
their true relations. 

Chapter ■ IV.-ITS NEED. 

1. —In the life of a family, a community, a state, or a 
union of states under its best and happiest conditions, 
there must be not rage, soldiering and bravado, but tolera¬ 
tion of opinions, concession to weakness, and a spirit of 
generous consideration for the sentiments and well-being 
of others. The acquisition of womanhood in the council 
and direction of state affairs is needed to promote this 
considerate wisdom, toward wdiich the human state is 
making very lame advances. 

2. —It is needed, because woman’s advent to this 
sphere of action will enlarge human views, and secure 
a fuller recognition of minds and interests different from 
our own. 

3. —It is needed because man alone as a political 
agent is a failure. Without his God-given mate he is in 


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THE LIGHT UNDER THE BUSHEL: 


political life an unbalanced force, as often harmful as 
helpful. 

(4.—While our national Congress is as a whole a rep¬ 
resentation which it would be an aching sarcasm to call 
the embodied wisdom of a calm and thoughtful people, 
and while the petty mercenary aims of the most con¬ 
spicuous men in public life are an open shame, the most 
notable example of a championing of human rights which 
is truly statecraft, is furnished by the unenfranchised 
efforts of the leaders of the Women’s Christian Temper¬ 
ance Union.) 

5.—It is needed because exclusive male legislation 
fails to protect womanhood in matters of plain morality, in 
which our government is simply a surrender to drunken¬ 
ness and prostitution. Many good men deplore these 
things, but from the one-sided, and one-sexed nature of a 
man, they cannot cope with them. 

(6.—Better to be proud of humanity than to be ashamed 
of unmanliness, for he is unmanly who is so incompletely 
human as to grudge the completest justice to womanhood, 
with which in honorable and dutiful co-operation we may 
hope to crush out every accursed thing.) 

7 —It is needed because the preservation of political 
manhood requires the recognition of political womanhood. 
Already class oppression reaches out to make a mockery 
of the suffrages of men. 

Alas for our own faithful yeomen— 

Their birthright is sold in the mart— 

Whatever oppresses the human 
They suffer their sorrowful part. 

Woman suffrage will double the vote of humanity against 
avarice. What else can stay the crushing advance of land 
monopoly and the liquor traffic? The sturdiest fighting 
men may play anarchist, and be hung in fools’ caps. 


WOMANHOOD SUFFRAGE. 


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Only womanhood infusing- into political life the monil 
courage which commands respect for the entire right of 
even the gentlest and the weakest can furnish the power 
of redemption in the coming struggle. 

8. —Deny woman recognition, and the cause of human¬ 
ity is lost. 

9. —Whoever puts an ambition in the place of a 
passion, or a duty in the place of an ambition does 
missionary work. To extend to womanhood new ambi¬ 
tions and new duties is to lift the whole race, and to give 
every human soul a clearer mission. 

10. —It may be said that most women do not want 
the suffrage, that they are willing to be limited to beauty¬ 
showing, or house-keeping, varied with the pains and joys 
of maternity. For all these things we have respect. But 
the fairest beauty is the noblest virtue, the best furnished 
house is the home of cultured friendships, and t'he 
worthiest mother is she who teaches her sons that their 
work for God is to influence men to be god-like. With 
virtue, and culture and God comes the conscience of duty 
to humanity, which sex is nothing to forbid, and in which 
politics is a field of action. 

11. —Many women are indeed careless of those divine 
calls which “lift us higher than we are,” and so are many 
men. But because they slumber, must we try to chide 
back into an impossible sleep those of us who have opened 
our eyes to behold the rising sun of a new and just con¬ 
dition of society? 

12. —Men and women seem to have been living half 
lives in an injustice detrimental to both. It is not ours 
to speak for womanhood, but we believe that many a true 
woman has enough of that same humanity which may 
animate a man to breathe with us a confession in these 
words of Phillips Brooks: “No true man can live a half 



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THE LIGHT UNDER THE BUSHEL. 


life when he has genuinely learned that it is a half life. 
The other half, the higher half must haunt him.” 

13. —In conclusion we turn to the prophetic utter¬ 
ance of the poet Longfellow, in the fulfilment of which we 
hope to have a part: “Woman suffrage is undoubtedly 
coming, and I for one expect a great deal of good to result 
from it.” 

14. —But into the poet’s saying we would infuse 
more poetry. We would sound our note for this cause as 
for one destined to “beat its music out” until it swells the 
full chorus of a redeemed humanity. 


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